


it's where we've gone and where they've been

by sith_shenanigans



Category: Star Wars Legends: Knights of the Old Republic (Video Games)
Genre: Aftermath of tragedy, Angst and Tragedy, Gen, Vignette, War Is Awful And Everything Is Sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-19
Updated: 2021-03-19
Packaged: 2021-03-28 06:14:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30135219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sith_shenanigans/pseuds/sith_shenanigans
Summary: They had all known the largest vessel had broken towards the colony on Sot Antania, and that they didn’t have the numbers to intercept it and rescue a ship full of hostages at once. Revan hadn’t hesitated long before making the call: “We’ll have to be quick, then.”They had been quick. Void alive, theyhadbeen quick.But they hadn’t been quickenough.
Relationships: Female Revan & Alek | Darth Malak
Kudos: 7





	it's where we've gone and where they've been

Their first real failure came about a month and a half after Cathar, after they had won a few skirmishes, and the Mandalorians had come to the twin conclusions of _we’re dealing with Jedi_ and _they’re more than a mild annoyance_. There had been a call for help on a sparsely-populated planet, and Revan had known it was a trap—it was so evidently a trap—but she and Alek had stood beside Yara as the latter had pressed her fingers to the navicomp and directed them so close to the system’s bounds that their ETA was measured in minutes at most. Then they had sent a probe droid in to check the situation, and the Mandalorians had blown it up and expected they’d have hours to prepare.

Revan had put a steady hand over Yara’s trembling one, pouring strength into her, and made sure their mostly-captured ships were arranged in perfect formation. Yara had whispered something into the ship’s heart and ensured they came out _alongside_ the hostage freighter. 

They had all known the largest vessel had broken towards the colony on Sot Antania, and that they didn’t have the numbers to intercept it and rescue a ship full of hostages at once. Revan hadn’t hesitated long before making the call: “ _We’ll have to be quick, then._ ”

They had been quick. Void alive, they _had_ been quick. 

But they hadn’t been quick _enough_.

There were— _had been_ —five cities on Sot Antania. Three had less than a thousand people, focused mostly on farming and fuel extraction. One had about twice that. And the last had been just over ten thousand strong, and the frigate hadn’t had time to leave the gravity well before the Jedi corvettes half-swarmed it, but it had gone to that city first. 

The frigate had been captured, thirty-seven Jedi against a hundred-fifty-odd Mandalorians. (Everyone they could spare.) The holes from the boarding pods could be patched later. Then every ship that could land had landed, had spilled out Jedi looking to give whatever aid they still could—and oh, they’d found more than a few survivors, and the healers had worked for hours, Revan among them. Half her patients had been too far gone to save, and even the equidistant spread of healers hadn’t stopped a lot of the survivors from dying on the way to one. Search patterns could only do so much. 

Good intentions could only go so far.

They had to break into shifts about an hour after dawn, when survivors stopped being brought in so often. Revan flipped a dozen coins and took a dozen healers by the shoulders and had the same conversation a dozen too many times, promising that they could rest, that they _had_ to rest if they wanted to save anyone, that there was no one they were betraying or letting down. She stayed up through the first shift and the second, until at the beginning of the third Alek caught her trying to drink caf behind a med tent with her mask pushed half-up. 

“Sleep,” he said. “I’ll keep things together.” Unwilling to repeat the conversation again on the other end, she had.

Four hours later she was awake again, slipping off towards something resembling privacy, desperate for a moment to process her own grief instead of two hundred other people’s. She sat down on a bombed-out wall and choked down tears for longer than she should have, half out of guilt and half out of anger, and all of it tasting of _failure_.

She should have done better. This was her fault—her arrogance and stupidity, her blind faith in all their abilities. And now ten thousand lives—too many to ever know, to ever fully conceive of—were on not only _her_ hands, but on her people’s. 

Ten thousand lives, multiplied across all of them. Two hundred Jedi’s guilt on her soul. She held it tightly to herself, willing herself not to flinch from the thought. 

Then she let out a breath and wondered who the hell she was kidding. 

Revan stayed there for a few minutes longer, watching the sun set on the planet’s frantic spin, trying to compose herself. To be someone worth following again, instead of a mess staring miserably at the horizon. Eventually a familiar presence approached. She didn’t move, not even to look towards him. 

“If I say we couldn’t have done anything,” Alek asked, lowering himself onto the rubble beside her, “would you believe me?”

She closed her eyes, as if blocking out the physical portion of the devastation would help. It didn’t. “No,” she said, quietly. “I don’t think I would.”

He squeezed her shoulder. “I don’t think I would either,” he admitted. “But it was worth a try, hm?”

“Can’t blame you for trying,” she agreed. With a hollow chuckle, she leaned forwards, folding her arms on top of her knees. “Can’t blame any of us for trying. Void…”

“Oh, little asteroid gods. Do _not_ start sulking on us, Revan, not now.” His grip tightened, fingers pressing in against the hard muscle of her arm, but his aura was only worry. “We all need you too much…” He sighed. “We did save the hostages, you know. That wasn’t for nothing.”

“Damn it. You’re right, on both counts, I know. But… damn it.” She opened her eyes again, feeling something grim and cold behind them. _Don’t look away,_ she thought. _You did this; don’t you **dare** look away._ “I’m going to have to talk to them. I’m going to address this. I’m going to have to say—” She let out a breathy, bitter laugh, her vocoder turning it into a sound like the hiss of steam. “This wasn’t _right_. That’s the problem, Alek. We didn’t do the right thing.”

“You think we should have let them die?” It wasn’t quite an accusation, from him. Just curiosity, bland and patient in his presence, and a reserving of judgement. (He was never so patient with anyone else. He didn’t have the same faith in their answers.)

“I think… yes. I think so.” Revan pressed her lips together, rolling her shoulders just slightly as she straightened. “I had too much faith,” she said, “that we could save both. The hostages and the city. Fewer lives now _and_ more later. As if we—I—could not fail. And so we were too late.” She put a hand on Alek’s, thinking _steadiness_ , thinking _strength_ , and she stood. “That was the Council’s idea of being a Jedi. That a few people meant more than ten thousand, just because we would have to see them die. How could that ever be right? If that’s our principle, then we’re— _idiots_ , firstly—and a liability to the war. We were played, today. We were blackmailed.” Her breath was slow and even in her throat. “We won’t be again.”

“Good speech,” murmured Alek. He moved to follow her towards their camp, the vornskr-shadow at her back. “Think the others will listen?”

“Yes.” There was a durasteel certainty in her voice. “They’ve seen what happened here. They can feel it almost as well as I can. They’ll listen.” Revan frowned, behind the mask, at the camp silhouetted against the ruined horizon. “And if they don’t,” she added softly, “then they shouldn’t be here anyway. Not now.”

“Mm.” He tipped his head to the side, as if conceding some point. “I feel like it won’t be a problem.”

It was comforting, on a deeply-ingrained level, to have his presence beside her. Sometimes, it still seemed like the only way to keep her thoughts from running away with her completely was to let him hold them—like he had done since they were children, since she had first come back to their bunkroom with an armful of the older students’ textbooks. He was an anchor back to that time. Her presence mixed with his as they walked, sharing in the raw tiredness neither of them could show, leaning against him without them ever touching. _I’m here. I’m here._

And so was he. Always.

“I’m inclined to agree,” she said, quietly.

* * *

Two weeks later, the Mandalorians tried to test what they’d learned, taking an insignificant station between the Jedi and the system they were raiding for supplies, putting out a comm signal saying exactly what they’d do if the raiding fleet was intercepted.

No one questioned the next move. 

Another of their stolen probes arrived in the hostage station’s system and was unceremoniously destroyed. About an hour later, a small Jedi fleet led by a battered frigate dropped out of hyperspace where the raiding fleet was still doing its work, and it and its undermanned corvettes took on the enemy’s little swarm of somewhat- _less_ -undermanned corvettes and bulk freighters, and there still weren’t very many ships that did well against a boarding party of mostly Jedi. It was Alek who slipped away from Revan’s side to find a boarding pod, and Alek who cut down the Mandalorian commander with _Sot Antania_ on his lips, and Revan stayed on the bridge and directed their ships and the not-Jedi bridge crew they’d managed to pick up, and she didn’t relax until she felt his wash of relief back where she stood.

They didn’t have enough people to take any of these ships. A couple escaped to limp home, a couple broke under fire, and Alek and Yara didn’t come back to her until the last had been emptied of everyone who hadn’t gone for the escape pods. She wrapped them in her presence when they did, so proud of them, so grimly certain they’d done what was right this time. And if others had burned in turn—

It had been fewer of them.

The Republic showed up a few hours after that, and the captain of the cruiser in the lead— _Nexu’s Teeth_ —stepped through their poor cruiser’s airlock with something like respect in her eyes. Revan shook the woman’s hand, smiling behind her mask, and led her off to the conference room with Alek and Yara beside her. 

They had a rendezvous scheduled not long after.


End file.
